Thursday, May 22

The last few years have seen the growth of a new branch of statistical mechanics, the area of physics that deals with the properties of systems of large numbers of particles. This new branch - the applications of dynamical systems theory to the theory of transport in fluids and solids - is founded on fundamental mathematical ideas of Sinai, Ruelle, and Bowen, but has a history that reaches back to the 19th century development of statistical mechanics by Maxwell, Boltzmann, and Gibbs. Recent research has focused upon the relation between issues in transport theory such as the calculation of transport coefficients like viscosities, diffusion coefficients, etc., and the Lyapunov exponents and KS entropies that characterize the chaotic dynamics of the system. Since the last Snowbird meeting in 1995 where a similar minisymposium was organized and held, substantial advances have been made in calculating the dynamical quantities of interest and relating them to transport coefficients, and in understanding the relationship between the dynamical systems approach to transport and that of irreversible thermodynamics. Of particular interest in this connection is the role of entropy production in a fluid system, and how it can be related to various fractal structures in the phase space dynamics. The speakers are all recognized leaders in this field and have made very important contributions to it in the last few years.

Organizer: Robert DorfmanUniversity of Maryland, College Park

10:00 Lyapunov Spectra of Various Model Systems in Nonequilibrium Steady States